On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 4:37 PM, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Ben. I agree with most of your points and questions, but just wanted > to nitpick one little point, inline below: > You're right -- I was being sloppy, that's worth clarifying. I think I originally meant to write "R core/the CRAN team" (i.e. referring to "R core" and "the CRAN team" as separate entities), but my fingers slipped ... Ben > On 09/11/2014, 3:26 PM, Ben Bolker wrote: > > Gábor Csárdi <csardi.gabor <at> gmail.com> writes: > > > >> > >> Hi, > >> > >> I think much of this is simply impossible to do. CRAN packages are > >> written and maintained by thousands of people, how are you planning to > >> convince them to reorganize their packages? Or even just rename them? > >> This obviously won't happen. > >> > >> Btw. did you see 'CRAN Task Views'? That is one organizations of > >> packages into topics. > >> > >> Personally, I don't think organization is the solution here. It is too > >> costly (i.e. too much work) to maintain, impossible to enforce. I > >> think, however, that a good search engine would definitely help. > >> > >> FWIW there is a simple search engine here: > http://metacran.github.io/search/ > >> This ranks packages according to the number of reverse dependencies > >> (among other things), i.e. packages more often used by other packages > >> will be higher up in the list. > >> > >> Ranking them according to downloads is also possible, but AFAIK only > >> one CRAN mirror gives out statistics about downloads, so you don't > >> really have the complete numbers there. > >> > >> Disclaimer: I built the search engine above. There are obviously other > >> alternatives as well, e.g. http://rdocumentation.org, and > >> http://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/packages/ are the two I know. > >> > >> Gabor > > > > A few more thoughts: > > > > * similar topics have been discussed _many_ times over the years on > > the R mailing lists (sorry, I can't point you to any specific > > threads). So far the R core/CRAN team have not indicated any interest > > "team" should be plural here. Though there is overlap in membership, > CRAN is a separate entity from the R Core team. > > Duncan Murdoch > > > in making changes in the directions you suggest, so it's up to > > the community to implement the things it would like to see. There's > > nothing stopping you from mirroring CRAN packages in any way you'd > > like (e.g. see Revolution R's 'MRAN': > http://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/ , > > which among other things allows you to sort packages by task view). > > > > In addition to the Task Views pointed out by Gabor (you may enjoy > > this version: http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/~rowlings/R/TaskViews/ ), > > there have been a variety of individual/community attempts to provide > > more package information: > > > > * CRANberries http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/cranberries/ gives a feed > > about package changes > > * CRANtastic http://crantastic.org/ attempted to set up a community > > site for package rating/voting (never got a lot of traction though). > > * download information _is_ available, unofficially, from some > > mirrors other than the RStudio mirror: see > > http://www.rpubs.com/bbolker/3750 > > > > Questions: > > > > * how would you propose to enforce package naming? (One of the > > great things about packaging code R is the relatively *low* > > barriers to entry ... but that has obvious disadvantages ...) > > * who's going to enforce and curate the metadata? > > * who's going to decide on the criteria for CRAN package removal > > (i.e. how to determine quality, or how to decide on a threshold > > for removal?) There's some filtering based on packages failing > > their automated checks and being archived as R advances ... > > > >> On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 11:24 AM, Steven Sagaert > >> <steven.sagaert <at> gmail.com> wrote: > >>> Hi, > > > >>> I’ve been using R on and off for a couple of years. I think R is > >> pretty great but one thing I’d like to see improved is the way > >> packages are organised. Instead of CRAN being a long list of > >> packages having a short & usually unintelligible name I ‘d like to > >> see packages organised in a hierarchical way with that path acting > >> as a hierarchical namespace just like you have in many other > >> languages like Java, C#,Scala,… The names of the (sub)packages > >> should also be clear and unambiguous & packages should be organised > >> according to their functionality and not just for example be code > >> for a whole book thrown together and given a cryptic name. > > > >> Next to that it would be nice to have extra metadata in the > >> packages to allow for another more loose flat multi-class > >> class-action like in tagging blog systems & other metadata to allow > >> for for automatically generating something like task views. > > > >>> Due to the large number of packages it’s hard to see the forest > >> from the trees so a recommendation system for CRAN based on > >> popularity (download statistics) , ratings & other data like related > >> packages from package metadata would be most welcome. > > > > > >> Finally the number of packages in CRAN is exponentially growing but > >> there is also a large partial overlap in functionality between > >> packages & so many packages make it hard to find what you are > >> looking for. So maybe there less is more and there should be a > >> system of removing hardly used/low quality packages on a regular > >> basis. > > > > ______________________________________________ > > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
